


Our House in Pleasant Hill (Building Your Home Remix)

by navaan



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Avengers: Standoff AU, Domestic Bliss, Dreams vs. Reality, Living Together, M/M, Pleasant Hill, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 12:47:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28867245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: Tony met Steve on a Thursday and he remembered it clearly.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 9
Kudos: 43
Collections: 2021 Captain America/Iron Man Remix Relay





	Our House in Pleasant Hill (Building Your Home Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Steve's Bathroom (Interior Design is My Passion Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29434758) by [Neverever](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever/pseuds/Neverever). 



> This was written as part of the **Captain America/Iron Man Remix Relay 2021 - SWEETS CHAIN** and is a remix of [**Steve's Bathroom (Interior Design is My Passion Remix)**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29434758) (1561 words) by [**Neverever**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neverever) and was remixed into [**Fool's Gold (The Snowglobe Remix)**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29034486) (5881 words) by [**dirigibleplumbing**](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleplumbing). [Go read the whole awesome chain here.](https://cap-ironman.dreamwidth.org/2137848.html)

Tony met Steve on a Thursday and he remembered it clearly. 

Because, you see, there was this woman passing him in the street — long blonde hair, pleasant happy smile and carrying her groceries in a huge paper bag — and for a moment Tony looked at her, smiled back, wondered just for an instant who this was - shouldn’t he know everyone in town by now? — and then he saw it: golden and inhuman — a mask instead of a face or a face hidden by a metal mask. The woman with the blonde hair was gone and there was only that inhuman mask staring back.

He nearly stumbled over his own feet.

“Careful there!” someone said firmly, grabbed him by the arm and pulled him safely away from the curb. “You need to be more careful. You could have been hit by a car.”

Tony, feeling dazed and strangely irritable suddenly, a headache developing behind his temples, hadn’t even seen a car. But when he looked the street was busy.

How had he not realized the street was busy on a Thursday afternoon in Pleasant Hill? Wasn’t it always like that?

Wasn’t it?

Had it ever been before?

He had a moment of doubt and his vision threatened to blur — when he looked up to the person who had grabbed him and who was still holding on to his arm.

That was how Tony Stark met Steve Rogers for the first time.

“Are you alright there, son?” Steve had asked.

Tony had quirked an eyebrow at the tall handsome guy and retorted: “I think so. But surely I’m not that much younger than you. Son? Really? That’s a bit... odd.”

Steve had looked at him confused for a second, before he’d chuckled. “Sorry,” he’d said and then given him the once over. “Just be more careful —” his eyes fell on Tony’s oil stained blue overall and the name that was clearly visible on the little tag on his chest, “— Tony?”

“Yes. Tony, Tony Stark. I own the garage…” And this man was the second stranger he’d come across today in a town where nothing out of the ordinary happened.

A mystery.

Tony had been intrigued immediately.

“Steve Rogers,” the man had said, held out a hand and smiled. 

It was the memorable beginning of his friendship with Steve Rogers.

* * *

It had been a memorable first meeting and the start of _something_ that felt like _everything_ to Tony these days.

Like his life before hadn’t been real and now it was.

Steve, it turned out, was a now retired army captain. He had bought a house in Pleasant Hill two years ago and lived there on and off again in between two tours. There was a haunted look in his eyes when he mentioned it that kept Tony from digging deeper. 

“You must have seen a lot,” Tony said over milkshakes at the Pleasant Hill diner. “Tough coming home?”

“Tough deciding to walk away and build a home instead of doing what I know,” Steve said and looked out the window.

 _Build a home._ Something about that sounded familiar and comforting.

“What about you? Wife and kids? Nice house down Daisy Street?”

Tony laughed and shook his head. “No,” he said embarrassed. “I’ve taken over the garage —” he tried to remember how many months ago and for the life of him couldn’t actually recall the date, the passage of time, not even the season — and settled on, “ a while back. Only garage in town. So if your car needs fixing you come to me.”

Steve grinned as if Tony had extended a more intimate invitation. “I will. So, you live close to your business?”

He wasn’t usually embarrassed by the fact that he lived above the garage. For some reason though informing Steve of the fact made him nervous enough to feel heat rise in his cheeks. “Never got around to go house hunting. There was so much to do,” he explained even though Steve didn’t seem like he needed Tony to justify himself for his life choices.

“Well,” Steve said softly. “I’ll come by the garage for sure. And maybe you want to come by —” he stopped himself and for a moment they were looking at each other as if they both had realized what this was — their little “meet up at the diner.” It was the fourth or fifth time they had just “met up” sure the other would be here at the right time every week.

“Are we dating?” Tony blurted.

Steve just looked at him with a helpless smile and then asked: “Would you want us to?”

It was the memorable beginning of his relationship with Steve.

* * *

After their second properly acknowledged “date” moved to a visit to the garage and ended in their first passionate night spent together on Tony’s narrow bed in his tiny bedroom, Steve suggested: “My bed is big enough for two. So’s the house actually. Next time let’s go to my place.”

Tony had a feeling he wasn’t only suggesting it because the little folding table Tony had put in front of them to have their breakfast didn’t fill him with confidence. 

“The place is too big for one person anyway,” Steve added, probably because he had caught Tony staring at him in contemplation of his offer. 

For a moment the buzz of another headache simmered at the back of his mind and when he looked out the window he could have sworn there were snowflakes swirling in the wind — but it was the beginning of autumn and that was highly unlikely — and a not-quite-memory of a huge mansion sprung up in his mind. Tony himself opened the door for Steve and they were grinning at each other shily. _Your home, Cap. If you want it._

“Tony?”

He shook his head to clear it and caught Steve’s gaze resting on him with a barely disguised hint of worry.

“Yeah?”

“I’m not criticizing the garage,” Steve said very earnestly.

 _You shouldn’t fall asleep in the workshop, Tony._

_I have a comfortable bed down there._

_That you have a bed down there doesn’t mean you need to sleep in there all the time._

“The bed?” he tried, ignoring the memory of a conversation they had never had. His imagination was running away with him.

Steve laughed.

And there was another not-quite-memory of Steve dressed in red white and blue and laughing full belly laugh, head thrown back and throwing his arm around Tony’s shoulders.  
It was a nice not-a-memory that was so happy that it didn’t even cause a headache. 

Two days later Tony visited Steve at his house with an overnight bag and the intention of only staying one night.

“I like the decor,” he said when he looked around the sparse modern interior and the empty shelves and walls that made it look like nobody lived here. There weren’t even pictures of family to look at. 

Steve had the grace to look sheepish. “I know. It looks like I just moved in.”

“Kind of,” Tony admitted and then laughed. “But you do have a lot of space here.”

“Let me show you the bedroom,” Steve suggested not at all innocently. 

It was the beginning of Tony’s life Steve.

* * *

They were shopping for groceries at the small supermarket that was run by Cristina Young, who had moved into town long before them and seemed to know everyone, spending their evenings at the small diner run by Otto Pembroke, who Tony thought had only moved to Pleasant Hill two weeks ago while Steve swore he’d been eating at the place for months. Sometimes they took strolls in the park.

It wasn’t unusual to meet Doctor Selvig or even Mayor Hill in the streets.

Today both of them looked worried though.

“Anything out of the ordinary?” Steve asked in passing. 

“Why would you ask, Mr. Rogers?” Mayor Hill asked back, her brows creased.

“Old habits. Hard to break.” 

“No,” the Mayor said and grinned at them widely, brow smoothing out. “Nothing out of the ordinary. If you see any lost children though, would you mind telling me or the sheriff?”

Tony was nodding along, not taking an interest in the conversation — until a man stepped out of the drug store and bumped right into Steve, who threw his arms up in reflex and had the other man pushed against the wall suddenly. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” the man — Brian _Something-Something_ , Tony thought not quite recalling the man’s name — growled and tried to push back Steve who looked fiercely determined and scary. Tony had never seen him like that before.

Tony raised his hand, touched Steve’s shoulder — and there was the swirling feeling again as if the ground moved and the sky was shaking along with it, white dots danced in front of his eyes like snowflakes and for a second he saw Steve, in the that red, white and blue garb press a man in a gaudy red and yellow costume against a wall, looking pissed off. 

_Hyperion_ , he said in the not-memory, _stand down._

Tony shook his head and suddenly there was no man pressed up against the wall at all, only Mayor Hill talking pleasantly with Steve — and from the corner of his eyes Tony saw a little girl watching from across the street. 

A whispered voice that might have been Hill’s said: _Better we give Stark something to do. He’s getting curious._

He wondered why that would be necessary. He was quite busy at the garage, busy thinking of Steve and what they got up to in that half-empty house…

“Tony?” Steve was trying to get his attention.

“Yeah.”

“Did you even hear what I said?”

“Sure,” he answered automatically, trying to catch another glimpse of the girl and finding her gone.

That was how he accidentally agreed to take charge of renovating and redecorating “Steve’s place.”

It was certainly the beginning of something new.

* * *

Their interior decorator had been suggested by Mayor Hill. Her name was Alicia and Tony recognized her as that woman he’d seen in Pleasant Hill for the first time on the same day he’d bumped into his now lover. Something, he thought, had seemed peculiar about her that day, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember what had given him that impression.

“Not to your taste?” she asked after they had gone over drawings and samples and possible color palettes for all rooms at least three times. 

“I’m just a mechanic,” Tony said softly. “I know nothing at all about interior design and I sure as hell can’t afford it.”

“Your boyfriend thinks you have taste,” Alice said, smiling at him mildly. “Or he wouldn’t have asked you to do this.”

“I don’t think he’s keeping me around for my decorating skills,” he said, biting down on the urge to add a _honey_ at the end of the sentence. Something about Alicia was rubbing him the wrong way. He was feeling like he was walking through his future home with an ex-girlfriend judging his every decision. 

“Alright,” she finally relented. “If none of that is what you want, why don’t we go over it again. Walk me through the rooms and tell me how you and darling Steve use the space.”

He pointed from one place to the other, giving her the bare bone details. 

The truth was, there wasn’t much to tell. “We live very unexciting lives,” he said and grinned, “like pretty much everyone in Pleasant Hill. That’s the bedroom,” he finally said and they looked into the sparsely furnished room with a sturdy old fashioned bed in it. The walls were white. Steve had straightened and tugged in the sheets this morning with military precision as he liked to do, making the room look even sadder.

“Real soldier, huh?” Alicia asked.

Tony too had the vague feeling that the bedroom should have been more — _something_. The word _luxurious_ came to mind immediately — and thinking back to how long he’d lived in that little room above that garage, the intensity with which that idea took hold surprised him.

“The bedroom could be more —” 

“You could do better,” Alicia agreed readily. “You have enough space here for a bigger bedroom too.” She pointed at a wall and started to walk him through possible steps of changing the room set-up around.

“And color,” he said, warming to the idea of a well structured, tastefully decorated home that looked good but also like someone lived a life here. “I would love some… I don’t know, red and gold is a little too much probably. Maybe some… blue. Just some color.”

“I see.” Alicia was taking notes. She scribbled down some notes. “This could be the master bedroom, new bathroom here and an open kitchen…”

He had a feeling Steve would be appalled if Tony asked for a Jaccuzi even though from what he was seeing, there would be room for even that. 

“I don't know, let’s focus on the bedroom, Alicia.” 

They looked back into the spartan room with the admittedly big and comfortable if boring-looking bed and she promised: “Tony, I’ll give you the bedroom of your dreams.”

That was the beginning of their life in the middle of a redecoration construction site that made even Steve consider moving to the garage for a month or two.

* * *

In the end all turned out well.

Tony never saw the bill and he could instead surprise Steve with a wonderful new home.

“I like it,” Steve admitted, when he saw the red and white design of the kitchen. 

“You haven’t seen the best part,” Tony teased. “Close your eyes.”

“I can’t see when…”

“Don’t spoil my fun,” Tony said. “Keep your eyes closed. No cheating.”

He led Steve towards the bedroom by one hand. 

“Wow,” Steve said, staring at the California king bed and the art prints that were lining the walls. 

“You said you like the artist,” Tony said awkwardly. 

“I did. And you remembered.”

He was rewarded by a hug and a kiss that was supposed to be quick but ended up deep and hot and went on far too long. 

“Let’s test this bed,” Steve suggested when they were both flushed and trying to steady their breathing. “Needs to be thoroughly tested…”

“Agreed.”

It was the beginning of Tony’s life in what was now truly _their_ home.

* * *

The beginning of the end happened on what was also a Thursday in Pleasant Hill.

They were out in the park and Tony could have sworn he had caught a glimpse of _that_ girl again and lost sight of her immediately.

“It’s strange,” Steve said. “I know after being in the war I’m suffering from PTSD and it’s a long road to real stability and you’ve been helping so much. Just being with you helps, Tony...” 

Tony looked up at Steve, trying not to shiver in the cold breeze — wasn’t it supposed to be August?

“I love you so much,” Steve whispered and pulled Tony into his arms as if he’d interpreted Tony’s shivers as something else — fear, discomfort at the revelations of issues that Tony already knew about.

“Steve,” he whispered. “I love you too. It’s like… I never felt I completely fit in here until I met you. You even gave me a real home and…”

“ _You_ are _my_ home, Tony.”

And there… A snowflake. A snow storm! 

“It’s happening again,” Steve said softly and Tony freezes when he realizes that Steve’s staring at the snowflakes around them as if he’s seeing them too. “First I hear these voices. Then the world shakes and then snow... Always snow… Like back on the front. And I know it sounds crazy but when I try to remember it’s always some stuff from a World War II movie…”

“Like you’re remembering things that can’t be real,” Tony finished for him.

“Yes! I’m glad you understand…”

“I —” he started, “Steve, I see this girl and also sometimes — the snow and... Aren’t things real off sometimes? Like nothing is real and everything’s too good and quiet.”

He could see Maria Hill walk towards them at a brisk pace as the roads shook and the swirling snow started to be so thick that he was breathing snowflakes. People got in her way — among them Alicia who Tony could see was wearing that golden mask again, her blonde hair suddenly black…

“We’re trapped…” Steve concluded, watching the same scene unfold as people — villains, Zemo, Fixer, Hyperion, Doom — and some heroes turned on Maria Hill and other SHIELD agents, all in uniform suddenly.

A little girl whispered: “I’m sorry.”

And then the glass sphere around them shattered — taking the fake reality of the little imaginary snow globe that had been Pleasant Hill, SHIELD secure incarceration center extraordinaire, down with it.

And that was the end of Tony’s life with Steve in their little house in Pleasant Hill.

* * *

He straightened the tie before he stepped out into the hallway, feeling a little more like Tony Stark again with every passing minute. 

Steve was waiting for him at the end of the hall with Sam in his Captain America outfit and Vision standing to the side. Other Avengers of their different teams were hanging around too. The downfall of secret project “Pleasant Hill” had left them with villains on a sudden rampage, a reality altering little girl (who was also a sentient piece of a cosmic cube) on the loose and SHIELD in disarray. 

“You alright?” Steve asked.

“I’m fine, Cap,” Tony said tightly. 

Sam coughed. “He’s technically Commander Rogers and…”

“Yeah, Cap, you’re right,” Tony agreed with a wink to Sam. “You’re my team’s Cap which makes you the best Cap, but don’t tell me you call him that mouthful. You call him Cap like we all do, Captain America.”

Steve looked a little pained. “He doesn’t. Sam calls me Steve.”

“Creative. Are we on Steve and Tony terms? I wasn’t exactly sure how friendly we were before all this. Old man Steve was really angry at me for a long time.”

It made his heart flutter a little to see the slightest hue of pink rise into Steve’s cheeks. 

“We were on Steve and Tony terms,” Steve finally said after clearing his throat.

That was something at least. 

“Oh god,” Sam asked. “Is it true then? You were Pleasant Hill married?”

“We lived together,” Steve said tightly.

“Yeah,” Tony said. “As we did countless times before, right? From mansion to tower to...”

“Right,” Steve said very slowly and there was no hiding his discomfort.

Sam took pity for the moment and let it go.

“It was nice of you,” Tony said softly when they were alone later on. “To… let me move in. I mean I realize it was memory altered Pleasant Hill Steve who…”

Steve kissed him softly on the lips. “It was me. Just Steve.”

“Okay,” Tony replied, trying to process, leaning his brow against Steve’s shoulder. 

“Want to come back to my apartment?” Steve whispered, keeping an eye on the corridor to make sure nobody was watching or eavesdropping currently. 

“Why? Do you need someone to redecorate?”

Steve flushed and Tony laughed.

“I’m not as rich and awesome as I used to be,” Tony said, “but how about we go back to _my_ apartment and see where this goes?”

He wasn’t placing any bets yet on the king sized bed or jacuzzi — there was too much baggage and too many things they needed to unpack before this relationship could be something that lived in the real world.

“Okay,” Steve agreed. “Let’s go home.”

It could have been a slip of the tongue.

But right now Tony had a feeling it was the beginning of a new _something_ for Steve and him. What exactly it would be they could work out together.

He had a feeling that however it turned out it wouldn’t be like their life in Pleasant Hill — but it would be real and it was sure to be memorable.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fool's Gold (The Snowglobe Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29034486) by [dirigibleplumbing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirigibleplumbing/pseuds/dirigibleplumbing)




End file.
